Several of us have started our own, self-hosted, flash fiction challenge over at a website we're calling Obsidian Flash.
It's on a forum behind a password, so that anything you write and
submit is considered unpublished. Registration is quick, free, and
pretty painless.

Seriously, this thing is the perfect thing for you to do if you think writing is hard (or finding time for writing is hard), and especially
if you haven't been writing for a while. It's also great if you have
problems with getting past ideas that "you suck" (every first draft
sucks, face it) or self-doubt. Here's why:

1. Challenges like this are great for stimulating creativity.
2. You're supposed to write for an hour (ish); you can make that time.
3. You don't have the time to critique yourself.
4. You'll get helpful feedback from published authors and editors like myself, Donna Munro, Anton Cancre, and more.
5. We are friendly, despite all appearances to the contrary. :)

The next challenge is scheduled for THIS weekend. The prompt will go up this Friday (THAT'S TODAY, FOLKS) at 8pm EST. I am our flashmaster!

1.
All stories should be complete, written and posted within 24 hours of
the prompt being posted, and can be anywhere from one sentence to
1,000 words in length. Typically the prompt is posted by 8pm EST on
Friday, and stories are posted by 8pm EST on Saturday.

2. You may choose to write your story in any genre.

3.
Your story must be built around the restrictions—words, themes, photo
prompts, word limits, etc.—provided by the Flashmaster at the
beginning of the challenge.

4. Once the participants’
work is posted, the voting and comment session begins and continues
until all votes are in. Time limit for voting will be determined on
the spot, depending on how many people finish the challenge.
Typically this is within 24 hours of the end of the writing portion,
or 8pm EST on Sunday.

5. The winner becomes
Flashmaster and chooses the prompt(s) for the next contest. Also, you
get all the Internet Bragging Points you think you can get away with.

No comments
:

It is almost that most wonderful time of the year - the time when leaves fall, when mortality is evident, and children scamper oblivious collecting candy while adults fret and worry, distracted from the reminders of their own deaths by the kind pranks played on them by others.

Yes, it is all-hallow's eve. And let me give you a soundtrack so much better than the banal "scary" sounds you'll find at those abominations of halloween stores selling "sexy elmo" costumes.

We'll start with something hard to find, but well-loved among those who have: Sephiroth. This track, "Wolf Tribes" is very representative. This dark ambient track contains a menace that is deep, and primal.

Hopeful Machines, self-described as "Music for Sociopaths", is a side project from a member of Ego Likeness and has a lot of music available for download. They are more softly disturbing, with an aesthetic drawn from industrial-styled sampling and sweeping electronic chords.

Cryo Chamber is a label, but they offer several samplers of dark ambient works for free. Definitely worth checking out.

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:

Objecting to NFL players taking a knee during the national anthem is racist.

Full stop.

Think about it.

When BLM has a large event, or protests innocents shot by police, that's not "appropriate". When BLM blocks a street, it's not okay. When there's simply counter protests against Nazis and the KKK, it's criticized.

And when there is a silent, non-violent protest that literally had no practical impact and inconvenienced no one, it's still lambasted.

No comments
:

Digital homework submissions are a beautiful, but underutilized tool for educators.

While some aspects (such as TurnItIn) have been somewhat embraced, there's one other big way that having essays and papers turned in digitally will make things easier for educators and make it harder for students to slack off and cheat.

Word counts.

Don't give out assignments with page lengths, give out assignments with word counts.

For example, these two syllabi could, instead of listing the requirement of eight pages and fifteen pages, state that the papers must be 2,000 words and 3,800 words. The calculation is approximately 250 words per double-spaced page.

Word count is an easy thing to check in a word processor, and it makes complaining about font sizes and margins and spacing all a moot point. The point, after all, is to get the students able to write content about the topic; why waste your time (and theirs) with a very subjective and fudgeable metric?

No comments
:

It's possible - and sometimes necessary - to do a bit of mental aikido in order to facilitate the better options that are your ideals .

I use aikido as an analogy purposefully; it is a constructed martial art, can be translated as "the way of harmonious spirit", and is all about redirecting energy. In this case, you're redirecting your own mental energy, purposefully, and it requires mindfulness to do properly.

A simple example: You find it easy to commit to taking care of someone else, but have a hard time taking care of your own needs. Upon reflection, you realize that in order to care for another, you must yourself be in good working order. You cannot take care of someone else without tending to your own needs. From there, you can use the mental motivation "taking care of another" in order to do self-care without it seeming greedy or self-indulgent.

Framing it as mental aikido, though, reinforces that while this can be quite challenging, it's a learned skill. A skill you can learn. A skill that you will sometimes fail at while practicing, but a skill you can always improve at.

But that doesn't make sense. Why would the forces of Hell mess with non-believers?

It's wasting time.

In this movie-default idea of Christianity, literally the only people worth messing with are those who are "good" or "saved". The heathens, the people who aren't "saved" or believe the right kind of way are already screwed. As the Hills said themselves:

"Conjuring 2" is a story told through the eyes of believers, whose strongest weapon is their faith in God. Our film allows believers and non-believers to travel their journey with them, and in some ways, maybe affect someone who is on the edge of faith, and somehow give them the strength they need.

The actions of the forces of evil in these stories literally lose them souls all the time. Sure, some heathens die (they would eventually anyway), but the actions depicted in these stories (or in the IRL stories they're loosely based upon) would drive people towards the one way they could get out of evil's grasp.

The old bet between JHVH and a satan in the Book of Job is the only way this makes any kind of sense (though we're never told whether Job's wives or children are religious and good before they're summarily slaughtered for a celestial bet)... but again, that makes the random shenanigans in all these films simply counterproductive. Even in The Exorcist, even with the priest's questioning of their faith, the demon's actions seem to do little but provide moments for people to die for their faith (automatic sainthood!) or give them a proof of theology not seen since Thomas placed his fingers in a resurrected Yeshua's side.

But maybe that's the point. Maybe I'm seeing these films all wrong. They're meant as a kind of theatrical "hell house"1 meant only to be scary to the non-believer and nothing but self-righteous back-patting for the believer.

Several of us have started our own, self-hosted, flash fiction challenge over at a website we're calling Obsidian Flash.
It's on a forum behind a password, so that anything you write and
submit is considered unpublished. Registration is quick, free, and
pretty painless.

Seriously, this thing is the perfect thing for you to do if you think writing is hard (or finding time for writing is hard), and especially
if you haven't been writing for a while. It's also great if you have
problems with getting past ideas that "you suck" (every first draft
sucks, face it) or self-doubt. Here's why:

1. Challenges like this are great for stimulating creativity.
2. You're supposed to write for an hour (ish); you can make that time.
3. You don't have the time to critique yourself.
4. You'll get helpful feedback from published authors and editors like myself, Donna Munro, Anton Cancre, and more.
5. We are friendly, despite all appearances to the contrary. :)

The next challenge is scheduled for THIS weekend. The prompt will go up this Friday (THAT'S TODAY, FOLKS) at 8pm EST. Donna is our flashmaster!

1.
All stories should be complete, written and posted within 24 hours of
the prompt being posted, and can be anywhere from one sentence to
1,000 words in length. Typically the prompt is posted by 8pm EST on
Friday, and stories are posted by 8pm EST on Saturday.

2. You may choose to write your story in any genre.

3.
Your story must be built around the restrictions—words, themes, photo
prompts, word limits, etc.—provided by the Flashmaster at the
beginning of the challenge.

4. Once the participants’
work is posted, the voting and comment session begins and continues
until all votes are in. Time limit for voting will be determined on
the spot, depending on how many people finish the challenge.
Typically this is within 24 hours of the end of the writing portion,
or 8pm EST on Sunday.

5. The winner becomes
Flashmaster and chooses the prompt(s) for the next contest. Also, you
get all the Internet Bragging Points you think you can get away with.

No comments
:

You can tell a lot about how a relationship is going (and how it's going to go) by the emotional bids in the relationship. The better the ratio of positive:negative "bids" or interactions (even tiny ones), the better the relationship. The effect of these emotional bids is even demonstrated in subconscious physiological responses, where couples who routinely fought could be sent into flight/fight responses merely by proximity, but those who were doing well were more relaxed around each other.

I want to take this idea a little bit further. I have a hypothesis based on anecdata:

The cumulative amount of positive bids in a person's life can help offset the negative bids in a relationship.

Here's a hypothetical example: Jane is in a crappy relationship with her husband. Their positive:negative interaction is somewhere around one good one to three bad ones ( +1:-3). But she has a friend at work where the interactions are overwhelmingly positive ( +4:0).

While those two don't cancel out to +2:0, I suspect that the positive relationship makes the bad one not seem so bad.

Even if that's just a platonic relationship (and especially if it isn't), my suspicion is that the positive interactions elsewhere may mitigate the effects of the bad relationship. That is, no number of good other relationships in your life are going to improve that bad one, but it may make it not seem as bad. Good makes bad more tolerable, but not better. It's emotional self-medication.

Maybe it's because the other relationships (platonic or otherwise) provide the appearance of an "escape". Maybe it's because you haven't hit rock bottom, or how women's close friends can pull them through a crappy relationship.

It's a hypothesis, and one I have a little bit of anecdata for. What do you think?

“[Congress] rejects White nationalism, White supremacy, and neo-Nazism as hateful expressions of intolerance that are contradictory to the values that define the people of the United States.” It says we and the president should “speak out against hate groups that espouse racism, extremism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and White supremacy,” and use all of the executive branch's resources to “address the growing prevalence of those hate groups in the United States.”

Which is kind of funny because I don't think it's really a "horror movie".

Despite having read and written a great deal of horror, I'm not been much of a horror movie fan. (Reading it is different, somehow.) I intensely dislike jump-scares and definitely loathe body horror, torture porn, and gross-out movies. Give me Army of Darkness over the original Evil Dead any day.

I do enjoy what I tend to "dark fantasy": movies on the other end of the horror spectrum that contain fantastical elements and dark themes. Movies like Pan's Labyrinth, Horns, and The Lady in Black. (I also like Daniel Radcliffe as an actor but that's a separate point.)

I'll admit, it's a blurry line: 28 Days Later, despite all the zombies, falls into "dark fantasy" for me, while Alien is definitely horror.

Which brings us back to IT.

I think the 2017 version of IT falls into the dark fantasy side of genre for one simple reason:

The movie isn't about the monster.

Instead this is a movie about people, mostly the kids, but also the adults in the town. This is a movie that does what genre is supposed to do: hold a dark mirror up to reflect society and allow us to see ourselves more clearly.

Yes, the monster appears, and does damage to the town, and is delightfully creepy (though almost over using every horror movie monster trope developed over the last few years).

But the threat of Pennywise is not just there for jump scares. Pennywise's actions - and the actions Pennywise inspire - serve to reveal the core of the human characters and the relationships between them.

That exploration of character and relationships is the power of this movie, from the quiet brotherly love of the first scene to the quiet, slow separation of the group in the last, so reminiscent of the promises to always stay in touch after high school.

Let's just examine the irony here for a moment before moving on: These conservative folks are getting more angry because of the results of a research study, and thus are bitching on Twitter to remove funding(e.g. become more "economically conservative"1) because they're angry.

Oh, damn, that's some delicious irony.

So let's move on to the thing itself:

(Note: I used a similar mechanism as this study in my own research for my Master's degree.)

This is a research study that involves over a thousand participants. (That's good.) It contained control groups (also good) and examined an apparent opposite effect while refining and duplicating the study (very good!). And both the study and the author of the article were careful to note (including in the headline) that they were talking about economic conservatism, which is a very specific thing.

That's four big questions right off the top of my head. It's quite possible - I haven't had a chance to read the study itself yet - that the study answers none of these questions. It's even possible that the study has other issues, like the "hungry judges" study that I've been mentioning all week to people has some statistical problems I wasn't aware of.

Those are questions that need to be asked. It's important that they're asked, and meaningfully answered.

That's questioning scientific methodology to ensure you get accurate results.

But instead, these "capital C" Conservatives1 would rather condemn science based on the (summary of a summary) of the results... simply because they don't like the results.

That's bloody terrifying.

1 The study isn't even about political Conservatives: UC Director of Public Relations M.B. Reilly said: "The item is using the word conservative with a lower-case 'c' so to speak, in other words in the classic meaning or sense of 'cautious,' 'orthodox' or 'marked by moderation.' (In fact, if you look at the body of the text, you will indeed find that the word conservative is lower cased in the second and tenth paragraphs.)

"It would seem that some are perhaps perceiving the term as a capital 'c,' in other words as signifying and/or limited in meaning to a specific political party vs. the term's broader definition and connotation.

"I hope this is helpful context to have."

No comments
:

Here is a simple thing that I never really thought I'd have to spell out:

If you start (non-casually) dating someone with kids, be aware that you will be a part of those kid's lives, and will have to take on familial responsibilities. If you're not interested in that, don't start dating someone with kids (and definitely don't get so serious that you move in with them).

If you are the person with kids and are (more than casually) dating someone who actively refuses and avoids taking on or helping with familial responsibilities, it's time to DTMFA. That person is not dating you, they are only interested in a part of the totality that is you. Continuing to date them does a disservice to your kids.

To clarify: I'm not advocating that you introduce someone to your kids/introduce yourself to their kids as "your new parent". Dear FSM, no! In this age of blended (and sometimes thoroughly run through the mixer) families, it's important to not try to be a "replacement"

When I say familial responsibilities I mean things like "helping pick the kids up from school/daycare if you have to work late" or "helping make sure the kids brush their teeth". Things like that. They're responsibilities that are usually taken on by parents, but aunts, uncles, grandparents, and even good friends of the family can do those things as well. Hence, familial responsibilities.

Yeah, casual dating is a different story. I'm not advocating that you should introduce children to everyone you're dating. Some relationships only last a few dates. Some last only a few weeks. While there's nothing wrong with a short-term relationship, forming attachments to people who then just up and disappear can be really upsetting.

But again, if you're looking to step up on that escalator (or even have more than a casual relationship), all the people in that relationship have to be engaged with the kids and making sure they're taken care of. The kids are a price of admission, and if it's not freely paid that speaks ill of both the parent and the person(s) dating that parent.

Several of us have started our own, self-hosted, flash fiction challenge over at a website we're calling Obsidian Flash.
It's on a forum behind a password, so that anything you write and
submit is considered unpublished. Registration is quick, free, and
pretty painless.

Seriously, this thing is the perfect thing for you to do if you think writing is hard (or finding time for writing is hard), and especially
if you haven't been writing for a while. It's also great if you have
problems with getting past ideas that "you suck" (every first draft
sucks, face it) or self-doubt. Here's why:

1. Challenges like this are great for stimulating creativity.
2. You're supposed to write for an hour (ish); you can make that time.
3. You don't have the time to critique yourself.
4. You'll get helpful feedback from published authors and editors like myself, Donna Munro, Anton Cancre, and more.
5. We are friendly, despite all appearances to the contrary. :)

The next challenge is scheduled for THIS weekend. The prompt will go up this Friday (THAT'S TODAY, FOLKS) at 8pm EST. Donna is our flashmaster!

1.
All stories should be complete, written and posted within 24 hours of
the prompt being posted, and can be anywhere from one sentence to
1,000 words in length. Typically the prompt is posted by 8pm EST on
Friday, and stories are posted by 8pm EST on Saturday.

2. You may choose to write your story in any genre.

3.
Your story must be built around the restrictions—words, themes, photo
prompts, word limits, etc.—provided by the Flashmaster at the
beginning of the challenge.

4. Once the participants’
work is posted, the voting and comment session begins and continues
until all votes are in. Time limit for voting will be determined on
the spot, depending on how many people finish the challenge.
Typically this is within 24 hours of the end of the writing portion,
or 8pm EST on Sunday.

5. The winner becomes
Flashmaster and chooses the prompt(s) for the next contest. Also, you
get all the Internet Bragging Points you think you can get away with.

Disclosure of Material Connection

Some of the links in the posts above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

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